Teacher Beliefs and Practices about Administering Corrective Feedback on Student Writing

抄録

This preliminary study aimed to gather data about English teachers’ beliefs regarding the provision of corrective feedback for student writing in university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. Participants included English instructors from Japan and abroad who responded to a survey that employed both qualitative questions about teachers’ beliefs and practices, as well as quantitative questions regarding the methods they used and the time used to explain them. The data was analyzed with the goal of answering these questions: 1) What types of feedback do teachers prefer and why? 2) How long do teachers spend explaining their feedback system? 3) Do teachers require a revised draft and why/why not? 4) How much time do teachers spend making corrections? 5) Is there a difference in the type of feedback teachers prefer depending on the elements of writing that they are focusing on? How well do they feel that students act on those corrections? According to the results, teachers preferred indirect and explicit feedback for all aspects of writing. They spent a short time explaining feedback systems due to assumptions that students already understood, but a long time correcting individual student work.